Prose and cons … a creative writing workshop at the Ty Newydd National Writers' Centre of Wales, Criccieth. Photograph: Cymru/Alamy

Hanif Kureishi has declared that creative writing courses are a waste of time and that most of the people enrolled are talentless (and as he teaches on one, presumably he should know). As an alumna of such a programme, I’d love to say that I was – what is it that politicians say? – ‘dismayed’ by his comments, or that they were ‘unfortunate’, but actually, I think he is probably right.

My overriding memory of studying creative writing is of sitting in a room without air-con in high summer, listening to the ululating sound of my desk partner’s hearing aid, while we ‘workshopped’ passages from students’ opening chapters for three hours or so. All I could think of at the time was that I probably would have learned a lot more by rereading Tender Is the Night, or firing off submissions.

Of course, there’s something to be said for Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” maxim, or Beckett’s “fail again, fail better”; and practising something, if it doesn’t make perfect, will at least make for improvements. But do you really need to pay thousands of pounds a year for somebody to tell you that?

The people on my course were there because they wanted to write. But I don’t think wanting to write matters; all that matters is writing. There are plenty of people ”with a book in them”, but apparently not very many with a really good sub-four hour open-heart surgery in them.

The best things I learned, I learned outside of university: going to poetry open-mic nights, bouncing ideas off friends, getting in touch with writers I admired and asking for their advice; reading, reading more; writing, writing more. I was doing all of this before I set foot in university. I already knew about the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook; I knew about double-spacing manuscripts. This kind of information can be readily found online, or by reading interviews and profiles in journals and newspapers, or just by asking writers themselves.

When all of that exists, joining a creative writing course seems redundant. I would often be frustrated by being given a handout of writing tips that I could have just Googled, say, or a photocopied excerpt of Stephen King’s On Writing, which I had already read.

The other thing that impacts massively on the success of a course (any course) is the tutor and peer group. A key problem for a writing course is this: what if you read your tutor’s writing and decide you really don’t like it? Worse, that you think it’s bad? Then what? And what if you find yourself in a group with people whose writing is incredibly dull to you? You still have to dedicate hours of your time to their work, when the selfish truth is that you’re better off focusing on yours.

Still, there were many positives to my course. I met a lot of wonderful people, many of whom found the course useful and whose work I enjoyed, but in terms of becoming a better writer, I really don’t think it’s worth spending so much money on something that, with a bit of initiative and determination, you could do by yourself.

Have you taken a creative writing course? What was your experience? Please tell us in the comments below – or, if you’d rather, use this form.